Thomas W. Jackson
I was asked to give an oral history of the Coast Pilot by Capt. Steve Barnum so I went to the library, at headquarters in Silver Spring, and found a book written by Capt. John F. Campbell on the History of the American Practical Navigator and the U.S. Coast Pilot. Capt. Campbell was a Panama Canal pilot who happened to collect old nautical books and memorabilia. Later, I discovered that a retired NOAA Captain named Albert (Skip) Theberge had researched and written a history of the Coast Pilot to be used on NOAA's website. I have used these two sources for the information that I have gathered. The word "pilot" means to control or to guide. Coast Pilot therefore translates as "Guide for the Coast". The USCP is a series of nautical publications consisting of 9 volumes that make up the sailing directions of the coastal waters of the United States and its possessions. The books cover a wide range of subjects that would be of interest to navigators our coastal, and intracoastal waters including the Great Lakes. The subjects include but are not limited to, channel descriptions, anchorages, bridge and cable clearances, currents, tides and water levels, prominent features, pilotage information, towage, weather, ice conditions, wharf descriptions, dangers to navigation, routing information, traffic separation schemes, small craft facilities and certain Federal Regulations applicable to navigation. This books supplement the suite of nautical charts published by NOAA with information that is not readily available on the charts. Sailing Directions have been around for a long time. It is known that the Egyptians produced such works between the 6th and 4th Centuries B.C. Other ancient civilizations such as the Phoenicians, the Greeks and the Romans also had need of this type of information. In more recent times (Late 13th and early 14th Centuries) sailing directions known as Routiers (French), Rutters (English and Dutch), Roteiros (Portuguese and Spanish), and Portolani (Italian) appeared to accompany the early charts that were produced for mariners. The production of charts turned out to be an early milestone on the road from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance because it provided scholars and mariners with a fairly accurate way of portraying the dimensions and outline of the coast. Early on, it was mostly the Mediterranean and Northern Europe, but later it included the newly "discovered" parts of the globe.
Over the next 2 or 3 centuries, other publications appeared. Most notably was a new type of pilot book with accompanying charts produced by an obscure Dutchman named Lucas Waghenaer. The charts that he made were complete with depths, aids to navigation, views of the coast as seen from offshore and the location of known dangers. Later the term "Waggoner" was used as a synonym for pilot guide. In 1671, the English published the first pilot covering Hudson's Bay to the West Indies. These early publications were large and issued in Atlas format. The sailing directions were printed directly on the charts or interspersed between them. This made them popular with mariners.
Edmund March Blunt was born in Portsmouth, NH on June 20, 1769. He moved to Newburyport, MA in 1792. He married in October of 1793 and had six children from the union. Mr. Blunt was described as an intelligent and astute businessman. Very much the archetype of the "New England Yankee". He would live a very long and productive life outliving all but two of his children.
In 1796, Mr. Blunt published the first Edition of the American Coast Pilot. Amazingly, it covered the entire east coast of the U.S. including the Gulf coastal waters, the Caribbean and the east coast of South America as far as the Rio de la Plata in Argentina. The author of this work was nominally, a man named Capt. Lawrence Furlong, a prominent New England sea Captain, but in fact, Edmund Blunt was the primary author using Capt. Furlong's name to gain credibility to his work. It has also been said that the Mr. Blunt had no qualms about plagiarizing some of the early English works and may have copied some of the information for his pilot from the "roteiros" of the early Spanish and Portuguese explorers of the New World. Also, Blunt's format was small and had no charts. His method relied on verbal descriptions of sailing directions, tide tables, tables of latitudes and longitudes of principal harbors, and navigation landmarks. In later editions, information on Admiralty Law, tariff regulations, Custom House procedures, and even chartlets appeared.
A second edition followed in 1798 which was almost twice the size of the first edition. Interestingly, in 1799, he was to also publish the first Edition of the American Practical Navigator as written by Nathaniel Bowditch. Mr. Bowditch, the famed American Merchant Marine Skipper, Mathematician, and Astronomer was a friend and neighbor who was also from Newburyport, MA. This made Edmund Blunt the premiere publisher of nautical books in the U.S. His business (Named "Sign of the Bible") would also include the manufacture, sale and repair of nautical instruments. After an 1811 fire destroyed much of his business in MA, Mr. Blunt moved his family and business to NYC. He called the new location (202 Water Street N.Y.C.), "Sign of the Quadrant".
Ultimately, the Blunt family would produce 21 Editions of The American Coast Pilot. During this time, it is interesting to note that a unique alliance sprang up between the Blunt Publishing family and the newly formed United States Coast Survey. Although the Coast Survey had its birth in the Law of 1807, it was not until the early 1830's that it began taking surveys. In 1833, the son of Edmund Blunt, also named Edmund took a job with the U.S. Coast Survey under Ferdinand Hassler. Following the death of Ferdinand Hassler in 1843, Alexander Bache became Superintendent of the Coast Survey and the partnership between the Coast Survey and Edmund Blunt the Younger blossomed. The "Sign of the Quadrant" virtually became the NY Headquarters of the Coast Survey. Sailing directions obtained by the Coast Survey were incorporated into the new Editions of The American Coast Pilot even though it was published by the Blunt family.
The first "Coast Pilot" to be produced under the auspices of the Coast Survey was" The Directory of the Pacific Coast" which was later to become known as U.S. Coast Pilot 7. It was done by George Davidson and published as "Appendix 44 of the Superintendent's Report of 1858" Interestingly, I had to research the origin of the Coast Pilot's description of Cuyler Harbor which is located on San Miguel Island in the Santa Barbara Channel. An allision involving an anchored barge had warranted the investigation by an Admiralty attorney. As it turned out, the description of Cuyler Harbor was almost exactly as it appeared in Davidson's 1858 Report to Congress. The survey of the Pacific coast was an awesome undertaking for the time and may have rivaled the Lewis & Clarke Expedition in its complexity. The Civil War broke out before the revised version of the Directory of the Pacific Coast was published and in 1867, the publishing rights for the American Coast Pilot were obtained by the Coast Survey for the sum of $20,000.00. The rights for the publication of the New American Practical Navigator was obtained by the U.S. Navy's Hydrographic Office at the same time. The U.S. G'ment is indebted to the Blunt family for stewarding these publications for the first 70 yrs or so of their existence. Also during the post war period, George Davidson would publish the Coast Pilot of Alaska (First Part) From Southern Boundary to Cook's Inlet in 1869. Alaska, (a.k.a. Seward's Folly), was purchased after the war and Davidson's work would be one of the great geographic works of the 19th Century. Historically, the Coast Pilot has contained the sailing directions for not only U.S. territorial waters but for these of its possessions also. There was once a separate Coast Pilot for the Hawaiian Islands and prior to their independence after WW II, the U.S. published a Coast Pilot for the Philippine Islands. In 1976, the Great Lakes Pilot was inherited from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and has been published by the National Ocean Service since that time. As published by the Corps, it was more an information Guide for vessels navigating the Lakes than actual sailing directions. Its format has been changed and the text was rewritten to conform with Coast Pilot standards.
As a Marine Information Specialist, I have at times, done research for litigants in Admiralty Law cases. This usually entails finding the origin of information that we give in the text of our books. I am very familiar with the stacks at our wonderful library in Silver Spring and I have also been down to the reading rooms of the L.O.C. The resources of the National Archives are available too. I occasionally run across the original notes of some of the early surveyors and field party members and have been impressed with the acuity of some of their observations. They were generally, very well written and displayed fine penmanship. From notes and drawings in the margins of books to letters written by helpful citizens, I have liked reading their missives from the distant past. Here is one that I would like to share with you: Point Bonita, CA...
In more recent times, the U.S. Coast Pilot has been upgraded to a classier format. A new edition of each volume is printed annually and its appearance is more in-line with the commercial boating guides. Though our publications are aimed at the commercial marine industry, our books are used by the small boaters as well. We have even had requests from authors writing books, for passages describing a certain geographic area maybe 100 yrs ago, in-period. The books are also collector's items in some circles. At present, each new edition of the Coast Pilot is placed on the internet as a free download. It is convenient to the mariner because he can download very selective parts of the books without having to download the book in its entirety. In the future, we are considering tailoring the books to the user: commercial deep-draft mariner, tug boat and barge traffic, commercial fisherman and of course, the recreational boater. There is also the chance that we will update the books on a weekly basis and place them on the internet so that the user has the most recent information. And lastly, (back to the future) adding coast pilot information to the ENC's (Electronic Nautical Charts) just as we did our very first printed charts.
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